no time for the love you send
by sparklinglemonade
Summary: There are three months before he leaves where they spend  almost  every night together. Finn/Santana. AU.


There are three months before he leaves where they spend (almost) every night together. She doesn't want to tell him not to go - or better, that she doesn't want him to go, so instead she tells him mindless lies about the other guys she's been talking to, the ones she meets during her summer class up at the university. He rolls his eyes, because he knows she's lying, but she starts to come up with fake names, back stories, anything that would just make him the tiniest bit less...everything. She tells herself it's for his benefit - he should know that she doesn't really give a shit, that she's just in this because she likes the way he bites on her earlobe while he comes, but she knows what a lie feels like. That, in itself, actually might make it worse.

She does it every night, while they're lying in the bed of his truck, wrapped up in a blanket. Her head is always on his chest, and his arms are always wrapped tightly around her. She feels safe, his cleanly shaven face in her hair, his muscles flexed against her skin - she's never felt this safe before, and it scares her. It scares her that he's her everything - it scares her more that she wants him to be. Tonight, she tells him about Miles, the guy who sits in the back of the class flicking a lighter, and gets kicked out almost every day. "He lit my cigarette for me," she murmurs, "I think it could work out."

She doesn't let it phase her when he presses a kiss to the spot underneath her earlobe, and laughs quietly, telling her pyromaniacs aren't really her style.

Two months before he goes, he asks for her real address. The one she'll use when she's not staying at school anymore - or, more accurately, in his little apartment downtown. She refuses to give it to him, and at first he thinks it's a joke. "C'mon, Sanny," he teases her, pressing butterfly kisses to the inside of her jaw as she wriggles underneath him, "don't you want me to write you letters? I can tell you all about my kills, and you can write me back and yell at me for scaring you with war sto-," he feels her tense up and stops moving, looking at the darker expression that's crossed her face, "what?"

"Don't call me that," she says, her voice even and her face stony, "and don't talk about...I don't want letters."

He raises a brow at her, chuckling before he realizes she's serious. His lips turn downwards into a frown, "You don't want to hear from me? You don't...want to make sure I'm okay?"

"No," she refuses to look at him, instead staring at his ear darkly, "I'll talk to you when you're back, you need to...I'll talk to you when you get back."

He doesn't understand, but he doesn't understand a lot of things, so he just shrugs and tells her he'll miss her the most.

A month before he goes, she ditches him. She actually goes out with the pyromaniac, and yes - he's really not her type at all. He talks too much - about himself, mostly, and his idiotic conspiracy theories, and the war, which makes Santana cringe. When he doesn't shut up about it, though, is when she has a problem. She rolls her eyes at him, snatches the lighter from his hand and lights the cigarette between her lips, grumbling, "Anything else you wanted to discuss? Infectious disease, perhaps?"

He laughs, like it's some sort of joke, but she's not kidding. He drops her off in front of her house - the one she won't let Finn come anywhere near - and she goes inside, feeling empty and bitter - and annoyed, because he was right. The next night, she slips her address, the real one, into the glove compartment of his truck. If it's meant to be, he'll see it, and write her - though she'd never say anything like that out loud, considering who she is.

A week before he leaves he tells her that he loves her. "I want to bring a picture of you," he presses a kiss to her temple, "I want to make everyone jealous." She holds his face tight in her hands and looks him straight in the eyes, inspecting them. She knew he wasn't lying - he would never lie about something so big, not to her - but she wanted to believe he was. He presses a soft kiss to her lips and she tugs them away, continuing to stare at him. "What?"

"You can't say things like that," she growls, her brows furrowed, "you can't make people jealous with my picture, and love me. You're not allowed."

He laughs, quirking a brow at her, "I'm not _allowed_? Says who?"

"You don't love me," she whispers, "say you don't." Her brain is whirring in panic, her eyes stinging while her body tingles in a way that, if it were any other time, she'd describe as wonderful, but right now it hurts. Her entire self has seemed to forget how to function, and she just needs him to say it - "You need to say you don't."

"I do love you, though," he laughs, brushing her hair behind her ear and bringing his lips close, "and I know you love me right back...you don't have to say it, I know you do."

"I don't," she runs her thumb over his lips, "I'm not allowed."

"Whatever you say," he mutters, giving her a knowing half-grin, pressing a kiss to the pad of her thumb. She rolls her eyes, and flips them over so she's on top, and can turn her face so he won't see her eyes getting glossy. He tells her again (twice) before she leaves, and on the walk home she continually pinches the inside of her elbow, just to make sure it's real pain she's feeling.

Three days before he leaves, she picks a fight. He's taking her shirt off wrong - he's going to rip it. "You know, I really can't afford to buy new clothes every time your stupid, over-sized mitts rip things that are already perfectly good," she snaps, "just...stop trying to pull it, leave it alone." She swats his hand away, glaring at him coldly. He raises a brow.

"Done, yet?" He asks, after a few moments of frustrated silence have passed.

"No," she growls, glaring down at him before ungracefully crawling out of his lap, pulling her sleeve back onto her shoulder, "all you ever want to fucking do is talk to me about how you _feel_, how you're going to fucking _miss_ me, and I don't want to hear it anymore - I'm so fucking happy that by this time next week, I won't have to listen to you _talk_." He rolls his eyes, (mostly) seeing right through it while letting her continue to yell, "I don't get how you think this is attractive? We're not _dating_, here, I'm not _committing_ to you or some girlie shit like that - I'm here for purely _physical_ purposes, and it makes it really difficult to get off when all you do is rip my fucking clothes and tell me you like me."

He waits a few beats, drumming his fingers on her leg absentmindedly, and then looks up at her, smacking his lips, "Now are you done?"

She groans in frustration, scooting down to the edge of the truck bed and hopping out, shooting him a dark glare over her shoulder before stalking off into the dark. She's only been walking for about five minutes when headlights flood around the ground behind her, and she can hear his clunky muffler dragging against the road. She doesn't turn around - she doesn't fucking care. She can't. He's not anything to her, and he's never going to be anything - this was fun while it'd lasted, but enough was enough.

He pulls up next to her, slowing down so that he's doing about the same speed as her feet, and turns to look at her, "Get in the car, San," he mutters, "I'm not letting you walk home. It's late."

"No," she says firmly, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyebrows furrowed in exasperation, "Go home."

"Come with me," he reasons, "and tell me what the fuck is up with you."

She keeps her eyes straight ahead, shaking her head slightly and sucks in air through her teeth, "There is nothing _the fuck up_ with me," she snaps, "except for the fact that _you_ don't get that I want you to leave me alone. Leave - you're already doing that anyway, aren't you?"

...Oops.

He sighs, running a hand through his freshly cut hair and stops the car, throwing it in park and opening the door. He catches up to her rather easily, taking a big step forward and swinging around in front of her, forcing her to stop dead in her tracks. She rolls her eyes, looking away from him; she wasn't going to do this right now - not standing in the middle of fucking nowhere, with him right there, and his stupid, rusty truck still ticking next to them. She wasn't going to do this at _all_ - or at least, she hoped she wasn't. He places his hands on either side of her, resting them on her forearms and sighs, "Are you gonna talk to me?"

"No," she mumbles, keeping her eyes focused on a swaying tree branch above his head, "I'll talk to you when you come back - or never. Either one."

He sighs, pulling her into a hug. She doesn't return it - just keeps her arms folded flat across her chest, her elbows poking into his lower abdomen. "You gotta talk to me now," he mumbles, "cause I'm here _now_, and...," he doesn't want to say what she's thinking, she's sure - _I might not be back_ - but he doesn't have to, and she's sure he knows that, too.

"I don't want you to go," she breathes, her voice barely audible, "I don't want you to leave. I want you to come back," she takes a shaky breath, "and I don't want to talk about it."

He sighs, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and just holds onto her, and it's probably the scariest moment of her life - it's when she realizes he really doesn't think he'll be coming back. It's when she realizes that under his skin, under all of that fucking optimism, all of those rainbows, and all the sunshine he seems to spew, there's a lot of doubt - a lot of him is scared, just like her. She sighs right back at him, taking a breath and kissing him softly, before pulling him back to the truck, getting in, and letting him take her to his apartment so they can just lay in his bed and be.

The night before he leaves, he gives her a necklace. It's not really anything too great - it's a silver chain with an ugly looking ring hanging around it, worn and obviously old - but she lets him put it on her and beam with pride. "This means," he whispers against the hollow of her neck, taking the chain between his lips for a moment and then letting it drop against her skin, "that you don't get into other guys truck beds, right?"

"A truck bed is the last kind of bed I really ever want to be in," she laughs, harder so when he lifts his head to look at her in confusion, "save for yours, of course." She twirls the ring around her finger, watching as the moon hits it from various angles. "I wish you weren't leaving," she mumbles, once it's turned from the night before to the day of, hiding her head in the crook of his neck, "I wish I could go for you."

He laughs, shaking his head, "The helmet would be too big for you, they'd lose you in there," he pulls her so that she's resting almost entirely on top of him, "besides, the other guys wouldn't really be able to understand your insults, and what fun would that be for you?" She smiles at him, flicking her tongue out over her lips as she rests her chin on his chest.

"You're going to come back," she reassures him, "even if I have to fly over there and get you myself."

"I know I will," he murmurs, "and I'll get home, and you'll tell me you love me," he smirks at her, "because you'll be so over-the-moon that I'm okay, I'll have tricked you into it." She shakes her head, laughing quietly and pressing her face into his skin.

She doesn't tell him she loves him, but she does cover them in a blanket, and tell him stories about non-sense things until the sun comes up. That should tell him everything he needs to know, considering Santana Lopez didn't stay up all night without a real reason for just anybody.

Three days after he leaves, Santana still hasn't gotten off the couch. She's missed her classes, and ignored assignments, and she doesn't really give a shit. She slides the ring on and off of her finger time and time again, watching as her television set flickers in the background.

Two months after he leaves, Santana gets a letter in the mail. It's not from him, but why should it be? She was sure he wasn't clever enough to check the glove box before he left - that's half the reason she'd put it there. Instead, it's a letter from his brother - she hadn't know that he had a brother, but apparently he did, and there was a letter from him sitting on her kitchen table when she got home, a note from her mother scribbled on a napkin next to it - _novio? ;)_. She tears it open carefully, her brow furrowed as she reads. Some of the words stick out to her, "lov_ed_ you", "talk_ed_ about you", "want_ed_ us to meet", but it's not until the end, when she sees the word, "funeral" that she gets it. That it clicks, and her hands start fucking shaking - her _body_ starts shaking, and she doesn't really understand what's going on, just that she's shrinking down, down, down. The paper drops to the floor, and she goes along with it. It's only when her mother gets home, hours and hours later reeking of cigar smoke and gin, that she finally makes it back to the couch, the necklace broken off and the ring placed crookedly on her bony finger, with the letter still crumpled in her hands.

Two months and one day after he leaves, Santana gets another letter in the mail. This one is postmarked from two weeks prior, and dirty. It looks like it's come from some other world, and she can fucking _smell_ him on it when she opens it. She can barely read the first line before she has to put it down. She doesn't manage to read the rest of it for who knows how long - she's stopped keeping track of time - but the first words always stick in her mind, like sweaty skin to the fake-leather seats in the cab of his truck.

_You thought I wouldn't find your address in my car, huh, Sanny?_


End file.
